


All-Divide

by inkbender



Category: Tales of Xillia, Tales of Zestiria
Genre: ALL THE SPOILERS, Alternate Universe, Crossover, Drawing parallels, Gen, Inviseebo, M/M, Post-Canon Zestiria, Spoilers, Xillia AU, humans and spirits
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-11-27
Updated: 2016-01-29
Packaged: 2018-05-03 16:16:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 17,622
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5297927
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/inkbender/pseuds/inkbender
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Mikleo has already waited a millennium. He tells himself that he can wait another year more--until the first human who can see spirits literally lands in his lap. Finding Sorey with Jude's help should be a piece of cinch now, right?</p><p>Of course it couldn't be that simple.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> I will never turn my back on somebody who needs my help.

_“You’re **late** , Jude!”_

Jude winces at Leia’s sharp tone and almost drops his phone. “Sorry! I lost track of the time studying—”

_“That is a poor excuse to leave a lady stranded at the train station in an unfamiliar city. Some creep’s been eyeballing me for the past fifteen minutes, which he wouldn’t be doing if **you’d**   **been on time**.”_

“I’m coming, I’m coming!” As quickly as he can, really, though there are too many people in the streets for him to break into a full sprint. His sneakers slide across wet pavement as he skirts around a slow-moving couple, barely dodges a speeding bicyclist, and barrels straight into a lithe figure with so little presence that they’ve both hit the rain-drenched asphalt before he's realized what's happening.

For a second, he’s a little too disoriented to comprehend just what went down. His phone is no longer in his hand. He’s lying on the ground—no, his hands are braced against a firm chest not at all like that of womankind, which saves him quite a bit of embarrassment when he looks up into pale lavender eyes. He frantically scrambles back. “I—I am so sorry. Are you alright?”

The body is motionless before him. He tries again, this time lightly shaking the man’s shoulder. “Are you okay, sir?”

The white-haired man responds this time, silently elevating himself into a sitting position. Jude tracks his movements, noting a slight tremor in his limbs. The man’s pupils are mildly dilated, though that’s to be expected upon being unexpectedly tackled into a muddy rain puddle. There are no abrasions or lacerations on his hands or arms despite their high-speed collision; his (admittedly antiquated) aquamarine outfit isn’t even that dirty. Still, it’s a relief when he finally murmurs, “I’m fine.”

Jude offers a hand to the man, apologies tumbling from his mouth. “I’m so, so sorry! I have a friend waiting at the train station who cannot wait but I really should have been watching just where I was going and… and…” The man doesn’t accept his offer, doesn’t make any sort of effort to remove himself from the puddle and return to his feet, and leaves Jude unsure of how to proceed. The man’s gaze flickers between Jude’s extended hand and his face before finally settling on him. It’s an intense sort of scrutiny but nothing that Jude hasn’t already experienced under Dr. Haus’s tutelage; he just meets the man’s stare and awaits the final verdict.

“You can see me?”

He wasn’t expecting that. “Uh… yes?”

The man glances at his hand, appearing to deliberate for a full three seconds before tentatively reaching upward. The slender fingers that curl around Jude’s wrist are solid flesh and bone and muscle if not slightly cool to the touch. Though it took absolutely no effort on Jude’s part to body-slam him to the sidewalk, pulling him back up takes some exertion, which assures Jude that this man is very human.

Now to find his missing phone. It can’t have flown very far; at least, he can hope. Thank goodness nobody has taken notice of this embarrassing crash. Eh… he’s not seeing the little device. His attention is drawn to the muddy water dripping off the man’s teal jacket and he can’t help but stare forlornly at the ripples that each drop causes in the puddle behind the man.

“Are you looking for this?”

The man has his miraculously dry phone held gingerly between his thumb and forefinger; Leia’s tinny voice echoes from its functioning speakers. “Thank you! I…” It takes him a few seconds to scrounge around the pockets of his white coat for his business card (always handy to have when meeting potential future employers). “I’m a doctor's assistant at Talim Medical Center,” he explains, swapping phone for business card. “I’ve an appointment that I’m running late to, but if you have any future muscle aches or internal pains that you just can’t figure out, don’t hesitate to call me. Okay?”

The man nods once. When Jude hazards a glance over his shoulder two blocks later, the man hasn’t moved an inch.

He can’t help but feel those lavender eyes on his back all the way to the train station.

* * *

 Time is a funny thing. The humans underneath its manipulations have no choice but to live out their existences in an explosive blaze of action before spluttering into a quiet darkness. Through sheer willpower alone, Alisha and Sergei moved continents into peaceful alignment. The Interim Shepherd Rose traveled around the world alongside her Sparrowfeathers, promoting the faith till her dying day.

Seraphim are not bound by time. Their bodies are not limited by decay and their minds only need to follow the truth of the universe to avoid falling to malevolence.

In Mikleo’s early days, his truth had been Sorey. He inhabited every second exactly as Sorey did because every second was indeed precious, a progressive step towards a series of goals set within the boundaries of a limited lifetime. So when Sorey was gone (much sooner than expected), Mikleo had been confronted with the reality of his existence: his path would be a long one, a journey in which seconds were just as meaningful as years. Decades spent wandering the ruins of the world as they popped up, settlements sprouting into metropolises only to wither into hollowed husks of forgotten history within the blink of an eye.

Most of his traveling he did alone. No human had yet to acknowledge his presence, even as malignant hellions gave way to neutral wildlife. He told himself he didn’t keep the space to his right empty in honor of a man who could very well spend yet another century in slumber, just to purify the earth of every last trace of malevolence. It’s something that Sorey would do.

Mikleo has already waited a millennium. He tells himself that he can wait another year more.

At least, until the first human since Sorey was around physically tackles him into a mud puddle.

* * *

 “Didn’t you say you needed to study?”

Jude rubs the back of his head sheepishly. “But this is your first time in the city…”

Sure that’s true, and she can’t say that she doesn’t want to trapeze down its wild, neon-lit streets with her childhood best friend. But… “This has got to be an important exam if you forgot to pick me up. Com’on, just take me to some exotic grocery store. We’ll just go back to your place and I can cook for you or something!”

“Ahhhh…”

“Don’t give me that look!” She plants her hands on her hips proudly. “I’ll have you know that after the Sulfur Incident, my dad took me under his wing—”

“To make sure you wouldn’t burn down the house again?”

She jabs him in the side with her staff right in the unprotected fleshy region underneath his armpit and is rewarded with a pained squawk. Good to know some things never change. “Geez, Jude! Never have I ever burned down anything.”

Jude folds his arms and waits.

But she's telling the truth! She’s never… well, there was that one time— “That doesn’t count, Jude. No irreparable damage. And your father said it wasn’t my fault.”

Jude raises an eyebrow.

“Okay, and your father’s also a jerk, so he doesn’t count either. But  _my_  dad’s a world-class chef!” She levels him with a challenging glare. “If you can’t put your trust in me, at least trust the Chef Rolando who put his trust in me!”

The grocery store that he takes her to has many, many exotic items that Leia would have  _loved_  to experiment with had she not been hell-bent on proving to Jude how she’s totally competent chef. No Arma Dylan eggs or mandragora bulbs; prickleboar cutlets and roasted peppers should be fine, right? Maybe a little spice… ooh, is that treant pollen? No, resist...

Jude’s apartment complex is… well, he’s a dirt-poor medical student, so at least this is a step up from the room under the stairs that she’d prepared for. Still, the building is about as much as she’d expected: water-stained walls so thin that she can hear two guys porking it on ground floor, music echoing down the stairwell as they hike up to the third story, and the creepy skittle-scuttle of what she really hopes are not spider legs in the darker corners.

Those skittering noises better not be coming closer. “Jude…” she squeaks as he wrestles with his key in the jammed lock of his front door.

“Don’t worry about them, Leia,” he reassures. “Just a pair of armored centipedes coming for lunch. I leave lettuce out in the hallway so they don’t have to lay eggs in my pantry.”

“ _Jude!_ ”

“Home sweet home!” he cries, shouldering his door open.

She practically vaults over his head and into the kitchen. “I will end you, Jude, if you try anything funny,” she snarls, kicking off her shoes at him. “There are pranks and then there’s just cruel.”

Jude just smiles serenely.

“I’m not kidding, Jude.” She drops her groceries onto the counter. “Remember the dusk bats? There’s more where that… came… from…”

Okay, so maybe not everything is as she’d expected. The sitting room is neat and orderly, typical of Jude; what is  _not at all_  Jude is the presence of a scantily-clad blonde sitting on the ratty couch. Leia skips straight over her first impression, because she can confidently state that Jude would  _never_  resort to… that. And one look at Jude’s shocked expression tells her that Jude wasn’t expecting this woman in his flat either. So…

Keeping her voice steady, she murmurs, “Jude?”

He jumps, his glance darting to her and quickly back to the stranger. “What are you doing here?”

A pregnant silence. The woman stares into the emptiness of the sitting room before her wine-colored eyes abruptly slide in Leia’s direction. “Mikleo. She does not have Vision.”

She’s suddenly the center of attention in the room. The woman’s gaze is fine; Leia’s never been one to balk at public scrutiny. But while her usual reaction at Jude’s skeptical look is to jab him in the side with her staff with the assurances that she will always have his back even when the zombie apocalypse strikes, Leia isn’t exactly sure where his uncertainty is coming from this time.

She laughs weakly. “Am I missing something here?”

Jude’s gaze darts around the sitting room. She can feel the tension he’s radiating as his brown eyes land right back on her every few seconds. Oh yeah, she’s definitely missing something. Something huge. Something that requires Jude to slide in front of her defensively and use his Friendly Calming Voice: “Why are you here?”

“Jude Mathis,” says the lone lady. “Are you aware that you are the first human to bear witness to the Great Spirits in a thousand years?”

…Yup, definitely missing something.

* * *

Psychology is definitely not his scope of practice, but Jude’s pretty sure he’s gone crazy. How else can he explain the presence of three extra people in the room when Leia apparently only sees their stripperific leader?

The woman with the floor-length white hair covers her mouth with paper cards, her eyes fixed on Leia. “Oh dear.”

“Oi, Meebo.” The tiny blonde girl of the invisible group jabs her umbrella into the side of the man’s knee. “Can we skip to the end this time where you just do your Thing?”

He doesn’t like how their expressions morph whenever their looks shift in Leia’s direction. There’s an unquantifiable sense of joy when they address him that he can’t explain either, but a surge of protectiveness wells up within him when they look upon Leia as if she’s a threat even though she can’t see them. (Or  _because_  she can’t?)

“Hey,” he snaps at the man, drawing his attention away from Leia. “Why are you here?”

The man opens his mouth, but it’s the leader who speaks. “Are you aware,” she says slowly, “that you are the first human to bear witness to the Great Spirits in a thousand years?”

…Oh. She’s one of those traveling evangelists. His hometown has a small church that infrequently sends its missionaries out to comb the village for offerings. Though usually they knock on the door, stay outside unless invited in, and wear more clothes. (And are human?)

If this was one of Dr. Haus’s simulations, the most important thing for Jude to do when surrounded by civilians in a frighteningly new environment is to inspire confidence. He slides into the kitchen, putting himself between the man and Leia. “You broke into my house,” he says as pleasantly as he can. “I think I should be the one asking the questions.”

“You knocked me over first,” reminds the man.  

“I apologize, but honestly, it didn’t even register to me until I realized you didn’t feel like pavement.”

“Inviseebo,” the girl chortles. The woman hides her smile with her cards but can’t mask an unladylike snort of laughter. In a surprisingly childlike gesture, the man kicks at the girl’s shin; she diverts his momentum with her umbrella and almost trips him up.

Their leader’s quiet tone immediately mutes the growing squabble between the man and girl: “But you, Jude: you have an elemental affinity for water, do you not?”

He blinks.

She flashes his business card at him. “You call yourself a student of healing. Your first conscious spiritual contact just so happened to be with that of the Great Water Spirit Undine. You are able—”

“Undine?” Leia leans across the counter cautiously, though curiosity sparkles in her eyes. “The Lady of the Lake from the fairytales?”

The man wrinkles his nose. Oddly enough, the white-haired woman mirrors his expression. “Earth-dwellers,” the little girl mutters. “Can’t even keep who’s who straight after a few centuries.”

“Even if you have never physically witnessed spiritual intervention,” their leader presses, “you cannot say that you have not experienced it, Jude Mathis.”

There’s a sudden lump in his throat that he can’t speak around. “I…”

Leia squeezes his unexpectedly sweaty palm. “We haven’t,” she declares with the confidence Jude wishes he had. “Miss, if you’re with the church here, please tell them we, uh, we respectfully decline their services.”

“You misunderstand,” their leader says, rising from the couch. Leia’s grip tightens as the barely-clothed woman approaches. “As the Lord of Spirits, I, Milla Maxwell, have come to request you of your services.”

Jude chokes.

Leia pushes him back protectively. “I’m going to have to ask you to leave,” she says for him.

The terse silence is broken by the umbrella girl. “Toldya so, Meebo. Humans will never believe what they can’t see.”

The man's face is hidden by his bangs. “No _._ ”

“It’s just going to happen again. The moment the earth-dweller gives into peer pressure and loses his faith, he won’t be able to see us anymore. Save yourself the heartbreak and do your Thing.”

“No.”

“We can find Sorey just fine on our—”

“ _No, we can’t._  That’s the problem, Edna. Two hundred years of wild goosechases says that we need humans just as much as they need us.” The man rounds on Jude and Leia, his voice cracking. “Please. You're the only one I can ask. I need your help.”

Leia knows just as well as Jude himself that this is the ultimatum, the final cinch that seals the deal, the entire reason why he chose a medical profession in the first place. Never mind his inexplicable fear response to the name of Maxwell. He can feel her bristling, a lungful of sharp rebuttals ready to head him off before he can commit himself to a half-baked proposition presented by complete strangers—but they're both interrupted by a rapid series of taps against the sitting room window.

“Crusade’s onto us,” says a man’s voice. “I’ll hold them off, but there's only so much a little wind can do.”

The tension in the room skyrockets. Edna rises to her feet, umbrella slung casually over her shoulder. “Moment of truth, Meebo.”

“I am requesting your assistance, Jude Mathis,” says Milla. Her three spirits flank her, muscles taut underneath deceptively casual stances. “I need an answer.”

“What do you need me to do?” he asks, ignoring Leia's furious retaliatory jab in his side.

“If you can see spirits,” Milla says, “then it is my hope that you will be able to locate the seraphim who will become the Great Spirits of my missing elements.”

“I need you to find Sorey,” finishes Mikleo. “I need you to find the Great Spirit of Light.” 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello! I'm a multi-chapter writer. Multi-chapter reader too, which is why I am much disappoint that the Zesty community on AO3 is really big on one-shots. Not that one-shots aren't gorgeous in their brevity! But this here is a story that you can sink your teeth into for the long-term.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> He'd loved an earth-dweller once. But that was a long, long time ago.

“Jude, you _do_ remember you have a life here, right? Y’know, like medical school?”

Things are preeeetty serious when Leia is the voice of reason. Like, really cereal. With milk. Because seriously, if Jude ditches school now, he’ll have to spend the rest of his life working overtime night shifts at Wild Duck Burger to pay off tuition for the first semester alone while his dad visits every day just to stand in the background and shake his head and sigh obnoxiously. Plus, well, this is _med school_. Why drop the opportunity of a lifetime to chase after Bazonga Beauty and Her Magical Invisible Friends? (As far as Leia knows, Jude doesn’t even like bazongas.)

“I’ll leave a message for Dr Haus,” he decides after a moment of contemplation. “Family emergency.”

“Dr Haus knows your dad personally,” she counters. “And then your dad would know. And what you’re doing right now? Is _exactly_ what your dad warned—”

“My father has _nothing_ to do with this,” Jude hisses, and wow, this is why her parents were so relieved when she changed her major from law to nursing. Bringing Dr Mathis into any sort of argument with Jude is probably the only way to get Jude really, really angry at you.

Backpedaling wildly, she stammers, “N-N-No, I was j-just saying that you should use a way more convincing excuse! Tell Dr Haus you’ve had diarrhea for daaaays. Something so excruciating that you need to be on or next to a toilet for the next week. And you’d never ever want to pass onto your patients.”

Aaand she’s already become an accomplice. Has she always been this stupid? (The answer is yes, because this is Jude.)

Buxom Babe tilts her head, as if listening to some ethereal spirit advice. Then: “Yes. Regrettably. But given our current threat level, it would not be advisable to leave the girl behind.”

“Don’t bring her into this,” injects Jude.

Leia bars his advancing step with a straight arm. “Hey, bring me into this!”

“Leia, you can’t.”

She resists the urge to roll her eyes; however, Bang Bang Blondie cuts in before they can really get going. “Jude, on a scale of 1 to 10, how would you gauge the structural integrity of this building?”

He glances at her in confusion. “Well, as long as the central support cores remain standing…”

“Gnome!”

For all Leia can see, no apparent change comes over Bodacious Bonbons. Then the woman slams both palms into the brick wall separating Jude’s apartment from the starry sky and Leia abruptly has an excellent view of the city at night. The entire detached wall moves as one gigantic mass of plaster and stone straight outward, dislodging the guys in sneaky black outfits who’d roped themselves down from the rooftop and hung waiting just outside Jude’s window.

“Undine!”

A tornado of clear blue water materializes out of nowhere and douses a few projectiles, gathers up building debris and secret agent alike, and whisks them off into the darkness.

“Crusade has seen you with me, the both of you,” the woman says calmly, as if she hadn’t just… hadn’t just spontaneously pulled elemental forces out of thin air. “I cannot guarantee your safety unless you allow me to escort you to the seaport.”

“Wha… Y-You just…” Yes, _now_ pull out spiritual freakiness and creepy assassins. Did she just sign up to be the token helpless bystander in a magical girl anime? Leia fights to keep her voice steady as she pulls Jude towards the nearest exit. “Crusade? They’re after _you_?”

Some invisible force grabs onto Jude’s front and nearly yanks him out of Leia’s grasp, but she didn’t spend the majority of her existence to lose hold of him now. “Run first, ask questions later,” says Bumptious Bimbo in a voice so monotone that she could read _Icha Icha Paradise_ to children and nobody would suspect her of any wrongdoing. Her tone is so composed, in fact, that Leia barely realizes that she and Jude have been tossed through the gaping hole in Jude’s apartment into open air until her stomach shoots up into her throat and stops a scream from passing her lips.

“Slyph!”

A fierce whirlwind roars out of the woman’s outstretched hand and cushions their three-story fall. Her feet touch down on the pavement as if she’s simply skipped a step and this is the point where her brain decides to take a breather, because why bother marveling at the… magicness of magic… when running for her life is much easier on her sanity?

Jude’s feet are a little harder to move than her own, but a sharp elbow into his weak spot elicits that familiar yelp of pain that brings the both of them back to the task at hand: running for the nearest escape route as a soaring wall of flame almost literally covers their backs. Something explodes. Several somethings explode. Hot gravel stings the back of her neck.

“Jude, you have officially ruined big cities for me!”

“Never a dull moment!”

She wants to whack him the back of the head for joking while _everything_ is _on fire_ , but the asphalt beneath her feet abruptly decides to shoot for the sky, a piston of concrete and earth that launch her and Jude like human pinballs. It takes a moment to orient her flight in a way that doesn’t involves spinning and flipping and screaming, but by the time Leia has secured her safety upon a nearby rooftop, the entire street they’d been on seconds ago is shrouded within an ominous purple mist.

She’s flown a bit farther than Jude and landed on the next building, but Pointed Looks are way easier than Words anyways. The Slightly Shaken But Brave Stare that he returns, violently illuminated in brilliant orange by the abrupt ignition of the previously poisonous vapor, is not what she’d been hoping for. Tonight’s last departing ship sounds its final horn a few blocks away, sealing the deal.

All she’d wanted to do was sneak powdered slime glutton into tonight’s prickleboar noodle stew without Jude noticing. Where did she go wrong?

* * *

They’re sort of in a hurry, so Jude throws a fistful of gald at the startled kiosk cashier, points in the general direction of the ferry, and follows right on Leia’s heels because their escape route is already leaving. Leia’s staff actually survives when she uses it to vault onto the boat; Jude, on the other hand, has to settle for diverting all his energy into his legs and leaping.

From the moment his foot leaves the dock, he’s aware that he’s not going to make it. He’s not a very tall guy, okay? Yet another one of many reasons he keeps Leia around to make up for his… shortcomings. This is the part where she’s supposed to pop over the side of the ship and catch him. He’s already passed the peak of his arc, his fingertips just shy of clearing the bulwark, and if she doesn’t appear _right now_ he’s going to bounce off the hull with nothing but the chill ocean to—

A gloved hand envelops his just in time. The hand is anchored to a body whose mass fortunately outweighs his; the man it belongs to wastes no time in hauling him onto the boat. No comments from the peanut gallery about dislocating shoulders either—just a lighthearted, “Cutting it a little close there, don’tcha think?”

His foot snags on the railing and, for the second time this day, he full-on tackles another stranger to the deck. The pecs beneath his open palms are broader and sturdier this time around, muscle palpable even through a rough leather overcoat and the sleek silk of a large black scarf. Whereas Mikleo had been lithe and of so little presence that Jude didn’t see him till they were on the ground, Jude is acutely aware of this man, of the rapid acceleration of a heartbeat underneath his right hand. A corner of the brunette’s mouth quirks upward in a wry smile as he quips, “I’m more used to this kind of thing happening in your bedroom, but out here’s just fine too.”

Jude’s face bursts into figurative flame; he sits up so quickly that he can’t keep his center of gravity from shifting beyond his hips and promptly sits in the man’s lap— _eep_. His heart is actively trying to scale the back of his throat right now. People could light cigars on his face. He could power a pipe organ with his increased respiratory rate. And most embarrassingly, his legs have decided to stop working, so he keeps sitting in the man’s lap while hoping beyond hope that what he’s feeling is a belt buckle.

“Thanks for saving my awkward friend.” Leia grabs the back of his collar and pulls him the rest of the way off the man’s body. “We owe you one!”

“No problem,” the man grins, propping himself up on his elbows. Relief floods through Jude as he catches sight of what had been digging into his backside: the butt of an impressively large gunblade. “Just a stowaway helping out his fellow stowaways.”

“We paid!” he protests.

“We did?”

“Enough to pay for both of us, plus— _Milla!”_

The woman herself quite literally flies into sight, borne by a gust of air that gently deposits her upon the ship deck. The moment she touches down, her entire body flashes with light as the Four Great Spirits spring into existence around her. As far as Jude is aware, the manifestation of each elemental spirit is radiant enough to light up the entire deck and reflect off the black ocean all around; however, this is unseen by Leia and the man, who don’t even flinch.

“You have now personally experienced what it means to be involved with me,” Milla states, her eyes jumping from Leia to Jude. “This is your chance to back out.”

_You are the first human to bear witness to the Great Spirits in a thousand years. You’re the only one I can ask._

From his position directly behind Milla’s left, Mikleo’s pleading eyes meet Jude’s. That’s all it takes for Jude to reaffirm his conviction. Ignoring Leia’s exaggeratedly melodramatic sigh, he nods.

“I’m staying with you.” He smiles as warmly as he can. “Allow me the honor of being the first human to welcome you to the land of Elympios.”

* * *

He might be the Great Spirit of Water, but Mikleo doesn’t really like the ocean. While it is probably is the final frontier when it comes to ruins (more than enough civilizations have sunk beneath its endless waves), it’s precisely because of that sense of infinity that Mikleo avoids it. The ocean makes him feel tiny, an insignificant particle fated to wander along its aimless current. The ocean reminds him that he is alone.

“Yo, Mickey boy!” Zaveid wraps a tanned arm around his shoulder. “Pouting at a time like this?”

Okay, so not alone… but lonely. Always lonely. A millennium’s worth of loneliness. That its end is potentially within sight reignites a burning hope in his chest yet simultaneously crushes him with reminders of all those false leads, the wild goosechases, the undeniable feeling that Sorey is awake _but is not here_. A new doubts festers within him: after hundreds of years, why should his loneliness change? Why should—

“Damn,” sighs Zaveid, leaning back against the railing. His head lolls to the side and he looks up at Mikleo out of the corner of his eye. “You’ve still got the brooding teenager personality down pat.”

“Hey!” Mikleo smacks him on the shoulder. “I’ll have you know I’m a thousand years old.”

Zaveid closes his eyes. “Still as terribly unsocialized as the day you left your backwater mountain village. Just how much of those first few centuries did you spend alone?”

When Rose had passed, they’d all gone their separate ways. While it was surprisingly Edna who made the greatest effort to touch base with him every century or so, searching for new ruins and marking their locations in his book for (Sorey’s) future reference might have swallowed Mikleo up for a good era or three.

He grits his teeth. “Can we not talk about this?”

The wind spirit chuckles. “Jus’ sayin’… when you get to be as old as I am, you learn that there are some things you can and can’t live without.”

“Like women?”

“Don’t you worry, Mickey boy; you’ll hit puberty someday.” His face scrunches up a little in contemplation. “Or maybe not. Just know that a certain earth spirit we all know and love is always available should you ever feel the need to— _yeouch._ ”

Edna extracts her umbrella from the dent in Zaveid’s hip. “You were the one moaning his name in your sleep.”

“Aw Edna, we were supposed to keep that night’s festivities a secret, weren’t we.”

“My only promise was to keep your performance issues under wraps, old man.”

Mikleo tries to hide a smile. He’ll never admit it aloud (not as long as Zaveid keeps bashing Elysia as a hillbilly wasteland), but traveling with spirits again is refreshing. He’d still take the majesty of the quiet mountains over their traveling circus of seraphim any day, but… when the Lord of Spirits had introduced herself as the century’s latest Shepherd (and when he’d seen Zaveid and Edna and Lailah at Maxwell’s side), he couldn’t say no.

“Trouble’s brewing,” Zaveid mutters. Mikleo stiffens; all of Zaveid’s characteristic playfulness has evaporated, leaving a man ready for action. Edna instantly dispels her form and travels straight back to Maxwell to relay the information while Zaveid continues to read the winds. Mikleo channels his senses into the surrounding ocean. Their boat is an expanse of wood around him. A pod of whales dive quite a ways away, their songs rumbling across miles to reach Mikleo’s consciousness. A few quick moving speedboats skim lightly across the sea surface, heading straight for them.

“North,” he says. Zaveid’s already moving, pulling up massive gusts of wind and flinging them at the sails. The ferry lurches as it abruptly strays south from its course. Mikleo assists as much as he can, but there’s only so much he can do with a superficial current.

Interestingly, Maxwell’s Squire is the first to appear on deck. His gaze darts from Zaveid to Mikleo, then shifts sternward. “Pirates?”

“Not sure yet.”

“This is a passenger ferry, not a freight,” Jude frets. “There are nothing but people on board.”

Blips of orange light appears on the horizon; cannon report follows seconds later, each rumbling detonation prefaced by the outcry of a dying fire spirit. With each shot, Mikleo’s hopes that these are just pirates dies slowly. It’s Crusade. No one else would be so brash as to sink an entire watercraft, casualties be damned, to end the Shepherd and her Great Spirits. Worse still, Mikleo can’t even hope to combat it without Maxwell’s endless reserves of mana to back him up.

“We don’t have time!” shouts Zaveid, apparently able to read seraph as instinctively as he can read the wind. “Armatize with the Squire!”

Orange warmth brushes against his face as he looks to the earth-dweller. Human eyes really are windows to the soul: irrational fear barely covered by a false bravado yet bolstered by the burden of responsibility, the desire to help, and the need to protect. Jude is just like Sorey in that aspect—one look is all Mikleo needs to know the truth.

He’s made the right choice. This boy will be the one who will finally guide him back to Sorey.

This will the human’s first armatization. His first direct-tether. Physical contact can help reduce the shock of the experience, so Mikleo offers his hand. Jude envelops them within his much larger ones. Fists of a warrior, this one is: firm, supportive, reassuring. Remarkably fitting that he chose to become a doctor.

“Summon me.”

“Undine!”

Mikleo isn’t expecting the surge of mana that greets him as he and Jude become one. Certainly not as overwhelming as Milla, but humans for the past centuries have been completely devoid of mana, unable to interact with spirits except through the act of merciless slaughter via spyrix use. Jude catches Mikleo off guard even though his rhythm is cautiously slow, gentle pulses of energy that fill Mikleo with a sense of warmth and power he hasn’t felt since… since Sorey—

“Any moment now!” Zaveid squeaks.

 _Sorry to ruin your first time,_ Mikleo apologizes before spreading his access point wide. Ignoring Jude’s startled gasp, he shouts, “Maelstrom!”

There are witnesses on deck who cannot distinguish the power of Mikleo within Jude. They only see Jude lift his arms to the night sky and draw the furious ocean under his command. A gushing vortex of water sucks in the flaming projectiles while generating tsunamic waves. Screams echo through the interior of the ferry as it pitches dangerously.

“Any help here?” Mikleo shouts. He barely manages his footing as the twister’s violent surf washes over the bulwark and pushes him back towards the cabin. His barrier of waterspouts is doing a great job of drawing in Crusade’s missiles and smashing them against each other, but only one shell needs to slip through in order to endanger the integrity of this watercraft.

Lailah stumbles through the ocean spray to his side. “Mist me?” she laughs weakly.

“…No. Just… no.”

“That wasn’t my best,” she growls. “I’m out of my element, after all.”

She channels a bit of fire energy into his attacks; the resulting violet storms detonate rockets on the spot. But it still isn’t enough; the first bomb slips through their elemental screen and collides with the mast. Fed by Zaveid’s winds, its blast sets off a bright yellow firestorm that instantly disintegrates the sails and would have shortly consumed the boat as well had not Lailah unleashed a forest’s worth of paper tags into the conflagration. With the papery inferno now under her direct control, she pushes outward until the ship is encapsulated within a terrifyingly protective bubble of fire and ashes.

“Slyph!” calls Maxwell, instantly fusing with Zaveid. “Cloudburst!”

The thousand spears of wind shot through Lailah’s fiery shield are themselves ignited, resulting in a 360-degree spray of flaming spikes that decimate the attacking Crusade forces.

 _That should do it,_ smirks Mikleo.

Distress breaks loose within Jude’s mindscape. The pandemonium of emotions are not of Mikleo but he feels them nonetheless; no doubt Jude also senses his contemptuous reaction when he scowls, _What is there to be afraid of?_

In lieu of a response, Jude swivels about and faces the ship passengers crowding the deck. Like idiot moths drawn to a flame, the inquisitive humans cannot help but swarm en masse upon their designated object of interest until terror overcomes curiosity and forces them back. The result is a very clear demarcation between seraph and human, and the Squire… poor, naïve little Jude can’t comprehend why his own kind despises him, why even his female friend dares not cross that invisible line between human and spirit. Really, all he has to do is look around: everything that sails the seas in a mile radius around this very spot, Crusade speeder or not, is on fire. Humankind has not borne witness to the power of the Great Spirits in over a millennium. Humankind fears what it does not know… and they’ll destroy whatever frightens them.

He turns to the Slyph-armatized Maxwell. “We need to leave,” he says in Jude’s voice.

Milla nods. “Yes. However, even as Slyph I will not be able carry your weight. Can I trust you to make a stable vessel?”

“I can. It’ll be chilly, but I can.” He scans the crowd one last time, ignoring wary human glares to search for Edna. His eyes briefly connect with those of the Squire’s friend and, in that split second, she flinches. She doesn’t recognize him. She doesn’t know him.

Without warning, Jude unceremoniously evicts Mikleo from his mind.

* * *

As if wracked by a full-body shiver, Jude convulses once before losing all muscle tone in his body.

While Leia has spent the last five minutes completely unable to approach the strange man with lavender eyes who’d looked and sounded a lot like Jude but was _most definitely not_ , she’s already looping an arm around his waist when he begins to topple. _Oof_. He’s put on some weight or packing on some muscle or whatever. Good thing the man with the scarf had caught Jude when they’d “boarded” the ferry, otherwise Jude would probably be at the bottom of the ocean clutching her detached arm.

“We can’t,” Jude says. “The sails have been destroyed and the ship is stranded. We can’t leave these people behind.”

“But you probably should,” says a familiar voice; the tense crowd reshuffles a bit before ejecting Scarf Man himself. “I’d say that most everybody wants you off the ferry just as much as you do, so how ‘bout this compromise: you, me, and your lady friends take the lifeboat to shore to alert authorities?”

Boobilicious Bo—

(Erm, though after witnessing the fiery windy elemental magic light show, Leia should probably start referring to the Lord of Spirits as Milla freakin’ Maxwell…)

…Milla nods curtly. “Very well then. And you are?”

“Alvin.”

“Milla.”

“Just Milla?”

“Just Alvin?”

“…Leeeeeia!” She puts on her best beaming smile as all eyes swivel in her direction and bounces her hip against Jude’s. “And this is Jude. Just your normal college-type kids, we are.”

The man with the scarf rocks back onto one foot, folds his arms across his chest, and smirks at Milla. “Touche. Very well then, Lord Milla. Shall we head out?”

Milla turns to the people. “Are there any objections?”

Save for the howl of the ocean breeze through holes scorched through the sails, nobody answers.

Jude speaks up, though he falters as the eyes of a hundred apprehensive eyes snap at him. “Rest… Rest assured that, as soon as we reach an area with cell phone service, we will call for help. We won’t leave you behind.”

Leia tugs him away before he can crumble underneath the deafening silence.

* * *

 

“Land! Solid land!”

She might be dramatizing this a little, but never has Leia been more thankful to have her two feet upon the (relatively) steady beach. Sure, it’s only been fifteen minutes since she, Jude, Milla, and Alvin boarded a dinghy that seemed spacious enough yet felt incredibly crowded, though she can’t say that she can recall much of the experience.

Boats weren’t meant to fly. That is all.

“I take it your phone didn’t survive the trip?” says Alvin. Leia’s more enamored with the globe of fire that seems to have settled itself next to her. Freaky… but functional. And so warm… mmm. She’s sitting down and warming her hands before she knows it, ignoring the discomfort of sand immediately wedging its way under the hem of her shorts. Ugh. She’ll deal with that problem later.

Milla trots to Jude’s side. “Your electronic device does not work?”

Jude follows Leia’s lead and seats himself. “No.”

“Yeah… most machines aren’t waterproof,” Alvin says reproachfully.

“I suppose so. Truthfully, I’ve given up keeping track on the progression of human civilization.”

“So you admit to being Maxwell.”

“I never denied it.” Milla’s eyes close too long to be a blink as she carefully sits down. “I simply avoided agitating already frightened humans. It seems that this generation of mankind no longer seem to remember the Great Seraph Maxwell who’d once cast his blessing across the entire continent of what is now Elympios. Rather, they treat it as if it was an ill omen.”

“It’s not just that,” says Jude. There’s a small tremor in his voice that snaps Leia out of her warmth-induced stupor. She scoots over until her shoulder bumps up against his and maintains contact till his shivering subsides. “Maxwell isn’t just a name; it’s a taboo. It’s a conspiracy theory that nobody talks about. My father… He always hid me in the basement whenever the government came around for its annual consensus, because it’s supposed to be a special task force that investigates supernatural occurrences. Anybody too involved just… disappears.” He glances at the empty space to Milla’s direct left. “All those passengers on the ship, they saw how I controlled the ocean. As soon as they’re rescued, the government will know too.”

Alvin shifts uneasily. “I get the taboo about Maxwell, the ninja-boogeyman that my cousin used to tease me about; that’s common enough. But if what you’re saying about this secret organization is true, you do realize that it goes both ways, right? Everybody on that ferry was a witness. They were involved.”

“They were already involved,” he murmurs.

Before Jude summoned Undine, got lavender eyes, and started throwing water around while acting like a stuck-up idiot? The only event of note that Leia can think up is the repeating reports of cannon fire from all those attacking speedboats after Milla…

She recoils from Jude in surprise. “You can’t be saying that Crusade and Maxwell are the same thing.”

Silence. The floating fireball casts flickering orange lights across Milla’s passive countenance. Alvin isn’t wearing that perpetually smug expression anymore. Jude’s face is entirely hidden by shadow.

“Right?” Leia tries again. “I mean, that doesn’t make sense. Everybody knows Crusade is a terrorist organization because they’re loud and proud and like to blow up churches and temples. Nobody talks about Maxwell because they look like your normal government inspection agency, except people vanish quietly when they’re around. They’re like two opposite sides of the… the same coin…”

Their tiny camp circle falls quiet until Alvin says, “They could be the same or they could be separate organizations. What matters is that they’re both after our Lord of Spirits here. That means us too. Her traveling buddies and all that jazz.”

“But we’re safer,” says Leia, “traveling in numbers. Right, Jude?”

A small pause ensues. Jude seems to be thinking, but he could be listening to Milla’s invisible spirit pals discussing the best _Icha Icha_ novel published yet and she’d never know. The spirits could be doing anything and she’d never know. Maybe that’s why Crusade and Maxwell organizations are anti-spirit; if they can’t control it, they’ll destroy it. But if they could have seen just how much of a blessing Milla’s Great Spirits have been to her and Jude…

Speaking of which, has she been sitting right next the warm, friendly Great Fire Spirit without taking the time to thank him (or her? or it? Do spirits have genders? Would it be rude to ask?) She has the irresistible urge to stick her hand around the fire, just to see if she can make contact with him/her/it. Maybe the power of friendship/love/faith can give her the ability to _touch_ a spirit’s body, to give them a friendly pat on the shoulder in thanks. Though she’d probably end up sticking her hand into an inappropriate place instead, like their chest or face or something. Yeah, let’s not do that.

“The people on the boat were witnesses, sure,” Jude finally says, getting to his feet, “but I’m sure every one of them would rather be alive and in jail that drowned at sea. Let’s go. Since our cell phones don’t work, we need to find the nearest city that does so we can call for help.”

The flames bob upwards until it’s floating next to Milla at waist level. See? Totally helpful!

Without further ado, she, Jude, and Alvin follow Milla and the Great Spirit of Fire into the darkness.

* * *

It is nearly three in the morning when a young girl abruptly sits up in bed.

_Go back to sleep._

The floor is ice cold against her bare feet, but she grits her teeth and ignores the doll to pad across the room. Something is waiting at the window for her.

_Just a nightmare. Go back to bed._

It can’t have been. The girl has not dreamed in… in a long time. Not since she was left behind.

A glimmer of light flashes before her pale green eyes. For an instant, there is a boy standing just outside. He is smiling. She likes his smile. Then she touches the glass of her ninth-story bedroom window and he disperses. Still, she can sense him: a powerful spirit so vast that his mana stretches across the northern sky.

His power fades as he returns to his natural form, revealing the other manifestations of energy he’d previously hidden by being so close to her: four elemental spirits united underneath a greater spirit followed by three humans, all standing in the courtyard below. One human is just as mutated as she is, with mana lobes as strong as hers. One person is just like everybody else in Elympios: no spiritual presence. The last individual has the potential. It’s this last one that abruptly looks up and, despite the near impossibility, makes direct eye contact with her. Frightened, she withdraws from sight.

_Told ya so._

“Shut up,” she says softly.

_Those people down there? Those are your nightmares._

They can’t be. Not when they’re working together. Spirits and humans in harmony… that’s her greatest wish. She stares at the floating puppet. “You really think so?”

_Oh, I know so._

That decides it. “Nothing’s happened in my sleep or life for years. I’m going to let the nightmares in.”

Her door is locked, but she’s still tiny enough to squeeze through the gap in the grate over the air vent hidden behind her bed. She’s traveled this path so many times that she can find her way around in the dark. She knows exactly how to move her body across the thin plate metal in order to minimize sounds. She’s played up the shy, insecure, lonely child to charm a few of the more empathetic security guards into turning a blind eye to her harmless shenanigans, so at this time in the morning, she knows that these certain areas are free for her to do almost whatever she wants. That’s perfect, because her destination is a few switches in this certain control room that unlock a few doors and, most importantly, the elevator.

Her doll follows her the entire way, trying to discourage her. _You don’t want to do this._

“One of them is like me,” she whispers. “I want to meet him.”

_The researchers keep you isolated for a reason. What, you think they keep you locked up because they hate you?_

“You’re right. They’ve never liked me.”

She waits by the vent in the control room till the guard takes a bathroom break. Then she shimmies out through the grate’s unscrewed corner and does the deed. A small smile curls on her lip as the team of humans and seraphim enter the building without incident.

On her way back, a light spirit in the form of a tiny luminescent speck drifts lazily past her head. _Message to pass along_ , it whispers. It gains characteristics the longer she focuses on it, then loses form when it notices her trying to visualize it. _Are you Elize Lutus?_

“Yes.”

_Our great spirit sends his regards and a token of appreciation. Thank you._

Before it shifts completely into its own dimension, the light spirit drops a pair of yellow feathers into her hand.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Somebody write me armatizing, direct-tethering smut. 
> 
> That's already been done? ...Okay.
> 
> For clarification about this particular alternate universe:  
> \- The countries of Rolance and Hyland have merged over the centuries to become Elympios.  
> \- All malevolence has been purified and doesn't exist anymore. (Personally, I find malevolence really confusing. Why does Cardinal Forton turn into a hellion and not the Sparrowfeathers?)  
> \- The reason why normal Elympians still can't see spirits is because they haven't developed mana lobes.  
> \- Spirits come in all different shapes and sizes; seraphim are spirits that look like humans.  
> \- Jude and Elize are normal Elympians, yet they have mana lobes. Interesting...


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The best way to stop lying? Just don't say anything. Empty the mind.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> World-building chapter, aka info dumping galore.

_They wanted to shoot down the sun, so they kidnapped Lailah. Fighting fire with fire, I guess. Milla stormed their facility and pretty much blew it to kingdom come. Lailah was freed and all the earth dwellers died. Yay._

* * *

“Jude, my man! Already onto Edna so soon after Mikleo? You do your old man proud.”

Zaveid claps him on the back so violently that he would have faceplanted into the ground if not for Edna’s innate iron stance. The images flickering through his mind, straightforward and succinct as they are, vanish the moment the earth seraph pulls herself free of his mana lobes and reappears beside Zaveid.

“H-Huh?” Jude’s eyes dart frantically between his fellow seraphim. “We weren’t… I wasn’t…”

“Direct-tethering solely for the sake of direct-tethering?” Zaveid crows gleefully. “Jude, my boy. Jude. _Dude_. With Sorey, nothing was possible, but there may be hope for you yet.”

Seconds later, Zaveid writhes on the ground while clutching his stab wound.

Edna reholsters her umbrella. “Direct-tethering doesn’t have to be a pleasurable experience,” she explains, almost gently. “It doesn’t have to be anything. At its simplest definition, direct-tethering is a mana-driven link between human and spirit. You give me mana. I give you a spirit’s blessing. I don’t know why Mikleo thought carnality would be an okay blessing. I just felt like it’d be best to update you on the situation by directly showing you my memories.”

“So you’ve probably noticed,” Zaveid says, momentarily pausing his squirm of agony, “that Edna’s held the world title of _Worst Storyteller Ever_ for the last thousand years or so.”

“I like to keep things short and sweet. Like me.”

"She wasn’t even there,” Zaveid declares. “Now, me? I can show you the full story…”

* * *

_Crusade was but a recalcitrant mob of counterculture youths desperately seeking justification of their existences through the annihilation of all else. Why else would they seek to destroy the sun, the greatest source of warmth, light, and life in our dying, forsaken world? To that detestable end, they abducted our dearest Lailah and confined her within a strange apparatus that drained all fire spirits of mana to charge a massive lance-like weapon. Perhaps they speculated that a massive laser generated from the purest Fire would be able to overcome even the sea barrier that encloses our world and protects us from the empty void of merciless space—OUCH._

Edna slings her umbrella back over her shoulder. “Jude’s going to fall asleep.”

“O-Oh no, I’m fine. Really. Keep—OUCH.”

“Can’t you feel those tears? Hurry up and get this over with.”

_Oh Edna, ye of little centuries (and painful parasol pokes). The remnants of earth may crumble to dust alongside the sands of time, but the wind shall never cease to whisper precious memories even if it be to the empty sky. When you have lived as many millennia as I, you learn that the world’s greatest, everlasting treasure—besides womankind, of course—is that of The Story. So respect your elders and listen._

“Basically, all you need to know is that the Great Spirit of Wind chose a perverted old man as its vessel.”

_Shut it! Anyways… it was only moments later when I encountered our great Shepherd, known only then as Milla. The poor girl was aware only of her existence as a human being at the time. Though she openly respected and dwelt with a multitude of seraphim in peaceful harmony as was common in the isolated mountain village of Elysia, she had nary a clue that the Great Lord Maxwell lay dormant inside her soul. And that was where I came in: a gentle wind seraph who provided unto her sleeping heart the all-consuming power of love, who begot—_

“I feel the need to add that Milla was six years old at the time.”

_W-W-Well. Yes. Thank you, Edna. I-I must clarify that, uh, **fraternal** love between the newly awakened Shepherd and his first seraph knew no bounds. And I declare that, as her first direct-tether, I was as gentle as a newborn lamb and as generously providing as—_

“Six years old, Jude. We’re talking human years here. FYI.”

_Um, I… Continuing onwards! Alas, I could no longer sense the passionate flame that had burned within Lailah’s soul for centuries. Yet the moment I armatized with Milla, I could feel her desperate cry for assistance, so we rode the winds towards Lailah’s flickering presence. As we neared the facility, Milla heard for the first time the anguished swan songs of the murdered fire spirits, the palpable despair of our dying Lailah, of the ill-wrought mana that disappeared into the human-constructed weapon… and she awoke to her identity as the Almighty Maxwell, Lord of Spirits. With her power, she amplified the extracted fire mana with my winds; together, we gave birth to a firestorm that instantly incinerated all trace of Crusade from the land._

_Alas, the murdered spirits could not be revived, so Lailah took it upon herself to absorb their essence: their pain, their joy, the sprawling experiences of their fleeting lives. In that moment, Efreet rested his eyes upon a seraph with enough compassion to host the power of a hundred thousand dying stars and selected her to be the vessel of the Great Spirit of Fire._

_And I? Though I was naught but a lowly wind spirit who had roamed this barren land for many moons—_

“Heeey Jude!”

Edna grins at Leia. “On that note, why don’t we take a breather, Squire? Your human friend needs attention. Zaveid, get out of him.”

_Hold on, I’m not done yet!_

* * *

Leia doesn’t like being left out of the loop.

It’s not anybody’s fault. If anything, it’s her own stupid fault for… for not being able to see spirits. Ugh! It’s not like she even made that decision. Try as she might, all she can see of his invisible pals are the evidence they leave behind after they work their magical wonders. Like the floating fireballs that have been lighting their way through this dark night. Meh. She can’t change who she is, so the best she can do is get somebody else to update her on a normal basis.

“Heeey Jude!”

As far as she can tell he’s walking by himself, so why wouldn’t he want to chill with her for a moment? …Of course, he just so happens to be holding a conversation with a spirit and takes a moment to respond to her. “Leia?”

“I…” What happens if she runs through a Great Spirit? It might be cool to phase through Efreet or Undine; what would earth spirits in general even feel like? There are a ton of things she’s curious about but doesn’t dare ask for fear that it could be super rude or whatever. Leia’s pretty familiar with sticking her foot in her mouth, so she settles for, “Um. Are you. like.” She gestures. “Talking?”

“With you? Yes.”

“That’s not what I meant! Like. Before. Who?”

“Oh. Lailah’s the one holding the fireball up in front, Edna went back to join Mikleo inside Milla, and Zaveid’s right here.”

Inside… Milla?

She… she’ll think about that one later…

“Slyph?” Isn’t Slyph supposed to be a scrawny little girl surrounded by razor-sharp blades of wind? “Oh! Tell me what she looks like!”

Jude’s eyes wander in Milla’s direction. After a few seconds, he grins a little. “Uh. Mikleo was saying—he’s Undine, by the way—he was saying…” He glances to his right and promptly blushes. “Never mind.”

This whole situation really irks her more than it really should, because it really shouldn’t… but she and Jude have been integral parts of each other’s lives for as long as she can remember. To be unexpectedly blind and deaf to a significant chunk of Jude’s world knocks her so off her game, she barely knows what to do with herself anymore.

Jude stumbles forward as an invisible force pulls him to her. He stops a foot away, listening. Then: “Hey Leia? Try holding my hand.”

“Eh?”

“I’m going to try closing my eyes and… Lailah’s telling Edna not to try anything. Just give me your hand.”

Leia can’t describe the sensation that comes over her in the next moment, except that seems to originate in her palm and radiate up her arm. Sorta like a tingling disorientation. She reflexively takes half a step back.

Jude stares into the space between them. “I guess that answers _that_ question, Lailah.”

Huh. Was that…? She holds her hand up to her face. “Was that Efreet not-touching me? That’s so cool!” She sticks her arm out. “Do it again!”

Jude blushes furiously.

She snatches back her hand immediately. “I touched the naughty bits, didn’t I.”

“N-No—”

“You’re lying. That’s your lying voice. It’s the one you use when you’re trying to be nice, and we both know the truth hurts, but at least it isn’t blatant lies. Just say it, Jude! I touched Efreet’s naughty bits!”

 Jude’s face is as red as Efreet’s flaming body. (The male Efreet she remembers in her fairy tale books, at least.) “Please stop,” he huffs. “Leia, just give me your hand.”

“Nah. Not falling for that trick again. For all I know, I could accidentally cop a feel on Gnome’s manly manhood. I’d rather—OUCH _._ ” Some staff-like object just stabbed her hip and… _dang_. Guess this is a lifetime of payback for poking Jude with her stave. She hobbles away from Jude and his abusive friends until she’s latches onto the arm of the only other normal person in their party. “Alvin, buddy! Let’s hold a conversation that I can actually participate in.”

The man doesn’t flinch away from the strange girl who’d just glomped his arm. “Can’t put up with half a conversation, eh?”

He might be a complete stranger, but Leia instantly likes him. “ _Yes_. Oh man. I cannot even tell you… Well, you already know, so let’s talk about something else. Like where you came from, Mr Mysterious.”

He stiffens. She feels the tension ripple down his arm and instantly releases him. Ugh! Why can’t she stop sticking her foot in her mouth? She doesn’t even like feet, but she can’t help it!

“You don’t have to answer that,” she blurts. “Elympios is a big place anyways with tons of ferries from everywhere. I’ve probably never heard of the town where you’re from. I bet you’ve never heard of my village! It’s the most unremarkable city in the world, if you’re asking me. The only reason my parents’ inn is still running is because my dad’s a pretty famous cook. He made it to the semifinals on _Hellion’s Kitchen_ , didya know? Chef Rolando! I’m his daughter!”

Alvin gives her an appraising look. “Huh. The curry you made earlier did taste familiar.”

His compliment makes Leia’s heart swell with pride. She’d tried to season up the dish with some pixie wing dust; that _somebody_ had managed to detect and recognize any sort of flavor underneath the eye-watering spice is a win in her book.

“Yeah, well, he’s made his rounds in Elympios,” she says proudly, “but he spends most of his time at home. He’s a pretty great dad.”

“Never heard he had a daughter though.”

“Yeah, about that… Mom was pretty big on separation of public and personal life. When Dad first made it big and paparazzi came snooping, she pretty much forced me to live at Jude’s for a month.”

“Your boyfriend?”

Her rod is faster than her brain, which has never really been a good thing. However, her jab into the vulnerable spot under the armpit is met by a solid _thwack_ as he parries with the steel of his gunblade, _where did that gunblade come from._ He’s already moving to counter, he’s moving crazy fast, and it’s all she can do to block with her flimsy wooden staff before he slashes across her chest.

His broadsword is still coming down upon her when a thin stalagmite shoots up and pops Alvin in the wrist. It must have literally struck a nerve because all his fingers spasm and he releases his grip on the firearm; Leia barely has time to sidestep as Alvin’s weapon cartwheels past her and buries itself at Jude’s feet. 

“Play fair, soldier,” Milla says from up ahead, not even turning around to speak to them directly. “Metal on wood is hardly a fair fight.”

Disgruntled, Leia opens her mouth to object— _this pole has survived lots more than a dumb ol’ sword, it even vaulted me onto the ship_ —but Milla has already continued onward, taking the source of light within her.

“Soldier?” she asks.

“Mercenary.” In the fading light of Milla’s departure, she has to rely on sound alone to detect the meaning behind his words. Lighthearted. Probably smiling. “Almost like a soldier, except we don’t have to follow orders, we set our own hours, and we help people. For a price, of course.”

“Huh. So how long have you been in the business, Mr Mercenary?”

She can’t read his face in the darkness, but the ensuing silence definitely feels stiff and awkward. She quickens her pace towards Milla’s light, if only to get a gauge on Alvin’s nonverbal cues.

“So, Jude: boy… toy?”

His teasing, unoffended tone is such a relief that she answers right away to distance themselves from the previously awkward pause. “Jude and I have been together for as long as I can remember… which actually isn’t very long, since we’re both amnesiacs. My entire childhood and a good chunk of my preteen years is one big blank. I just woke up one day in Jude’s house… and maybe that’s… well, y’know when baby birds imprint on the first thing they see? Maybe that’s what’s going on. Anyways, we’re pretty much family.”

They’ve mostly caught up to Milla and Jude at this point, so she manages to catch a glimpse of Alvin’s raised eyebrows. “You lost your memories, you say…”

“Is that a problem?”

“Oh no.” The charming smile is back. “You seem to know him as well as you know yourself.”

“Well, he’s the kind of idiot who’ll throw himself at the feet of anybody who cries for help, so it’s my job to keep people from walking all over him.” At least, until he left her to work in the city under Dr Haus. She wonders if this semester was as hard on Jude as it was for her: a constant unease in her chest, only relieved with the anti-anxiety medication that Dr Mathis compounded for her—and completely eliminated the moment she saw Jude at the train station.

“Is that so.”

“That includes you too, buddy!”

“Hey, hey.” He whines good-naturedly. “What’ve I done in the few minutes we’ve been buddies that makes you think I’m a threat?”

“Uh, only the fact that you don’t like talking about yourself.” She tries to put a playful spin on her tease, but the affronted silence that follows makes her want to cram her foot in her mouth. “Whiiiiich I am totally cool with! Everybody has secrets and that’s okay! But, um, don’t take this personally, but it sorta puts you in a vulnerable spot. And Jude, compassionate medical student that he is, would throw himself under a bus if it made you feel better. So I’m just here to kick your butt into gear if you start manipulating Jude for your own evil purposes and all. Got it?”

“You’re going to have to get a metal staff if you’re going to come after me.” She still can’t see his face, but his tone is lighthearted enough. “We’ll pick one up at the next weapons shop.”

“I’m serious, Alvin. Just-Alvin. He might have a black belt, but he bruises easily.”

Alvin glances up ahead at Jude, who’s speaking in low tones to seraphim only he can hear—but his gaze in the flickering firelight is a thousand miles away.

“I can’t make any promises.”

* * *

“Squire?”

As their resident fire-bearer, Lailah walks at the forefront of their band of travelers. At her call, he speeds his pace until he’s caught up with her. “Efreet?”

“Call me Lailah,” she smiles. “I take it that Zaveid’s regaled you with his grand tales?”

He returns the smile uncertainly. “Are they not true?”

“I’m sure much of it was embellished, but it is true that it all started when Maxwell chose me to raise his human vessel.” She laughs sheepishly. “I suppose I truly am the mothering type…”

“About that…” He rubs the back of his neck shyly. “Zaveid said something about Milla not knowing she was Maxwell until you were captured. Why?”

The bright ball of fire in Lailah’s hands crackles. Tongues of flame lick the night sky greedily before she tames them and composes herself in turn.

“You’ve already experienced the dangers associated with being the Shepherd’s Squire firsthand, yet you’ve still elected to follow Milla down this path. It brings me great honor to partner with humans like you.”

Jude feels his cheeks warm. The twinkling stars above are unexpectedly fascinating. Trigleph’s night is so polluted with light that it’s been almost a year since he’s traced all the constellations.

“You made a decision that I never wanted to force on someone else,” murmurs Lailah. “Lord of Spirits Milla might have been, but I wanted to give her the opportunity to choose. Which makes it ever so ironic that my capture triggered her awakening anyways.”

“Did… did her awakening as Maxwell change who Milla was?” He hasn’t really had the opportunity to approach the woman. Even though her seraphim are eager enough to get all buddy-buddy with him, Jude gets the feeling that Milla’s keeping their relationship purely professional. Zaveid and Edna were easy enough to talk with, striking up a casual conversation with the Lord of Spirits?

“Yes. No. Most definitely.” Lailah’s fire momentarily dims. “She matured significantly with the wisdom and experience of Maxwell’s existence. Can you imagine how disconcerting that was to her fellow seraphim, to worship the image of Maxwell in a girl no older than six human years? It was because of this sudden shift in personality that a rift grew between her and the seraphim of Elysia. She has had very little social interaction since then, so again, I am honored that have you in our party. We need you in more ways than one.”

His cheeks color for a different reason this time. He hazards a glance at Lailah. Yeah, can’t get more obvious than that. “T-Tell me more about the primary reason,” he stutters.

“Ah, yes.” She nods quickly. “There is a reason why the four of us requested the help of a human despite already having the aid of Lord of Spirits. To properly segue into this, however, I must ask you: how many elements exist in this world?”

“Four,” he says instantly. “Water, fire, wind, and earth. Water douses fire, fire is augmented by wind, wind beats earth, and earth outlasts water.”

“That is correct… at least, it has been for the past fifteen hundred years or so.” She touches his shoulder. At her unspoken request to show him, Jude lowers his mental barriers and lets her in.

* * *

_In the era previous to this modern time, there were an additional two elements: light and darkness. Light shone before the eyes of man, giving them the ability to see and give offerings to spirits, and darkness gave spirits the presence to bless humankind. Together, Aska and Shadow joined the physical and spiritual dimensions within a symbiotic relationship while Undine, Efreet, Slyph, and Gnome created the foundations of the land they lived upon. The Lord of Spirits, Maxwell, maintained this equilibrium between the six elements for millennia._

_However, about three thousand years ago, Shadow began to infuse the land with her influence. As to why Aska did nothing interfere we do not know; it’s speculated that he felt unappreciated as the light to guide humankind, and so he let his sister infuse spirits with greater power. Thus began the Age of Chaos: malevolent creatures arose from this unbalance of darkness, hellions which turned upon Shadow and Aska and forced even Maxwell himself under their service. Shadow was corrupted and Aska began to fade; with the world’s end in sight, Aska had little choice left but to concentrated his power and hope in the few humans with strong faith and stronger convictions: the Shepherds. And the strongest of them all… that was our Sorey._

“Hold on. Didn’t Mikleo say that Sorey _was_ the Spirit of Light?”

_In all probability, Aska most likely chose Sorey as his vessel… for reasons that I shall explain in a few minutes, if you can be patient._

“Oh. Sorry.”

_No matter. Continuing onward: while we were not Great Spirits at the time, Zaveid, Edna, Mikleo, and I bound ourselves to Sorey’s service. We believed in his dream. We took faith in his courage. Our pilgrimage to restore balance between light and darkness spanned the course of several months; at its conclusion, we used a rift in time and space to travel to the Temporal Crossroads, a pocket dimension between the human and spirit realms where the hellions held Maxwell captive. With great sacrifice did we seraphim sever the bond that suppressed Maxwell. In the end, Sorey was the only one left standing before the great Maxwell and the weakened forms of Shadow and Aska._

_The damage to the spiritual world was extensive. With their short life spans, humanity has always been able to adapt almost instantly to any disaster; not so with seraphim, who are much slower to age and even slower to change. To prevent such a catastrophe from ever occurring again, Maxwell prepared to forever separate the two dimensions; he planned to consume Aska and use that power to banish Shadow into the human world._

_Now you must understand that though Sorey was fully human, he was raised alongside seraphim such as Mikleo. He became the world’s Shepherd so he could give every human the opportunity to receive a seraphim’s blessing through direct interaction, just as he had; so with Maxwell’s imminent threat about to take place, Sorey offered himself to act as Aska’s vessel. Alone, neither had the power to oppose Maxwell; however, together, they were able to keep the Temporal Rift open, with Sorey acting as a… a bridge, for lack of better terms._

_Sorey knew that becoming a spiritual conduit would strip him of his humanity, of everything but his most important memories. He knew that it would take centuries for the spirits of light and darkness to reach equilibrium once again. But he never wavered from his dream to see humans and seraphim co-existing in harmony, so he became the sole connection between the dimensions._

“Why is this the first time I’m hearing about malevolence? It doesn’t exist within the history books. There aren’t any recordings of Dark Ages and Eras of Chaos in at least the past five hundred years.”

_Precisely. Malevolence has been purged from this world for at least half a millennia. We still have enough darkness to give seraphim the presence to live within the human dimension, but not so much darkness as to create destructive hellions. Yet the return of light has progressed much slower when it should have been the first to do so, especially with Sorey already acting as Aska’s vessel._

“You think something’s happened to Sorey?”

“I know so.”

_Mikleo! Oh. Yes. This is perfect. Proceed!_

* * *

Lailah promptly vanishes from his mind, her little glowing light traveling from his to Milla’s skull and leaving Jude with only the company of the Great Spirit of Water. At Jude’s flummoxed expression, the corners of Mikleo’s mouth twitch upward in an irritated grin. “She’s a shipper,” he says vaguely.

“A… A what?”

“Not important. As the seraph who asked you to help me in the first place, it’s only right that I explain why we need you, Jude Mathis, to find Sorey.”

Jude catches his wrist before the seraph can disappear into his mind. “Wait! You’re not going to… do that… pleasure thing again, are you?”

The water seraph looks down upon him with half-lidded eyes. “Am I?” he purrs.

“I’d… I’d rather not,” he says and tries not to cower under Mikleo’s offended glare. “Why did you do it the first time?”

“Because humans are obsessed with instant gratification, aren’t they? I figured that carnality was the quickest way to give you what you wanted.”

Jude shakes his head emphatically. “Not like that. I’d just appreciate it if you… didn’t.”

The water seraph huffs, though a hint of red tints the pale skin of his cheeks. “Fine.”

* * *

_Five hundred years ago, I felt it in my heart that Sorey walked the land again. Don’t ask me how I knew. Sorey and I, we’ve been linked since childbirth. A lot like you and your girlfriend._

“Leia’s not my girlfriend.” Wow, it’s been ages since he’s had to tell anyone that.

_Platonic soulmate, then?_

“That’s not…” He pauses, turning the terminology over in his head. That’s actually…

_Forget it, I was just trying to establish an analogy. I knew Sorey was awake. I rounded up the other three; they felt it too. We traveled the world… and found nothing for two hundred years. The power of Light stayed weak the entire time; none of the humans we encountered could see us. I got so fed up I eventually left._

_Then Maxwell came to join us. As the Big Guy in the Sky, he couldn’t ignore his job of balancing Light and Darkness anymore, so he got Lailah to raise Milla as the future vessel of the Lord of Spirits. Why couldn’t he just wander around the land as a seraph, you ask? Well, we figured we’d start at the Temporal Crossroads and track Sorey from there; only problem was that nobody knew where the dimensional rift to the place was anymore. So Maxwell figured that he’d imitate Sorey’s circumstances and find the rift that way. Sorey began his life as human and figuratively ended it as a combination of human and seraph, so Maxwell started off with a human Milla and then tried  to turn her into a human-spirit hybrid. Too bad it didn’t really work out. Putting the Lord of Spirits inside an already pretty spiritual body overshot the fusion part and turned her into 100% seraph. The worst part is that we didn’t even catch it right away. Humans and seraph age really similarly for the first thirty years of their lives, so it wasn’t until Milla’s fifty-something birthday before Edna finally pointed out the elephant in the room._

_That was it. We’d failed. I was ready to split off again, go sulk in the mountains or something for another few centuries, until you bulldozed me over in Trigleph. I was lying on my back, ready to grab your hand and get back on my feet, when I had a sudden epiphany. What if what we needed wasn’t a hybrid, but a partnership? I mean, it could be just like the last era, when humans and seraphim worked together symbiotically to run the world. So we have Milla, who’s a seraph with a strong root in the human world—the embodiment of darkness. And then there’s you, Jude, a human with the rare ability to see into the spiritual world—a representative of light. Maybe the two of you can reach between the dimensions, reach into the Temporal Crossroads, and pull Sorey back to us. And if Aska’s still with Sorey, then maybe we can find where Shadow too. Maybe we can return to that previous era. Maybe my and Sorey’s dream will come true. Maybe…_

_I don’t know, Jude. I’ve been searching for too long. You’re pretty much my last hope. I don’t know what I’m going to do if this doesn’t pan out._

* * *

There’s a lot of emotion flowing out of Mikleo right now, so he unlinks himself from Jude before the human is overwhelmed.

“We’re going to find him,” Jude promises, immediately clasping Mikleo’s hands. They’re very large. Very warm. The comforting touch alone is almost enough to make Mikleo believe him.

He’s a lot like Sorey in that way.

He mumbles some sort of thanks and retreats into Milla’s mind. Only Lailah is there. She immediately reaches out to him.

_Mikleo…_

_Not right now, Lailah._

She withdraws slightly. _Then let’s talk about how **different** Jude is from Sorey. My greatest concern is his current energy level._

_Hm?_

_Jude armatized with you on the ship, didn’t he? The first time Sorey armatized with me, he slept for three days._

This gives Mikleo pause. _Are you saying he’s like Rose?_

_Rose had years with Dezel, so much that he left traces of himself all over her mana lobes._

_I didn’t get that from Jude. You’re right though. Jude’s mana lobes are really well-used._

_Yes._ Anxiety and worry rolls of her in waves. _Yet he insists he has never been able to see spirits until he met you._

That’s easy enough a question to answer: Jude’s keeping secrets. Humans tend to do that. It’s what made them more prone to turn into hellions than seraphim—the darkness they brewed in their hearts attracted malevolent spirits which then turned around and destroyed everything they held dear.

Not Sorey; Sorey was human, but he’d always been different. Jude? All Mikleo can really say is that memory loss is an awfully convenient excuse. Just not an acceptable one.

Mikleo has waited for a millennia. He has all the time in the world to get to the bottom of this.

* * *

“I see lights!”

Milla and her floating fireball has been leading them in the direction of the small settlement for quite some time now, but Leia’s the first to vocalize it (though probably the last to actually notice). The confirmation from their least able party member destroys the last of Alvin’s hopes.

And he’d said that he’d never go back.


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The most dangerous lies look awfully a lot like the truth.

Entering the large human compound had been too easy. The gate slid open easily, the front courtyard was unlit, and don’t even get started on the front door. Nobody leaves their front door unlocked in the dead of night. Only logical conclusion: this has to be a trap.

“It’s a trap,” Edna says.

Thank you.

“Is what Meebo would say.”

Mikleo jabs Muse’s staff in her general direction. Edna’s a small target so he’s not really expecting to hit her anyways, and it comes as absolutely no surprise when she immediately counters when her umbrella. She tries to lock his weapon through a twisting maneuver, but he has centuries of experience with pole weapons. Oh poor Edna, weep and prepare to—

Maxwell’s hand finds the back of his collar. “Children, behave.”

Edna pops her umbrella open to hide her smirk. Mikleo sticks his tongue out in response, just to keep up the pretense. …Mostly.

If he has to explain his reasoning… when one is practically an eternal being whose average lifespan stretches to a few millennia, keeping up the pretense of childlike immaturity is like taking a stab at being young again. Young like the Squire and his female companion: ridiculously eager to explore lands unknown and innocent to the cruelties of this beautiful world. Like becoming human again.

“All we need is a phone line,” Jude says. “If we come across anybody, I’ll tell them why we’re here. But I’ll be fine if we can get away with just making an emergency phone call.”

“Juuude.” Leia’s eyes sparkle. “You’re getting all kinds of sneaky, y’know? Oh, I know what! Let’s get dangerous.”

“Don’t. We are _not_ going to do this again.”

“Ah, the springtime of youth!” Lailah winks at Mikleo. “It wasn’t all that long ago, was it?”

He doesn’t smile back because it’s felt like an eternity, actually, but he’s not going to say it out loud because Zaveid and Edna are sharing that kind of look. Ugh. He dispels his form and retreats within Milla’s mind to observe the world through her eyes. Any relevant information about this building he immediately relays to her: _Helioborg Research Station. Mana Extraction, 3F. Observation Bay, 5F. Sixth Element Amplification, 7F. Storage Chambers, 8F._

According to Lailah, the last time humans were aware of the first and sixth elements, darkness and light, was before the Age of Chaos. That’s about six hundred years before he and Sorey were born. He peppers Maxwell’s consciousness with red flags until she acknowledges his warning.

“This office’s unlocked,” Alvin announces. The room they enter is quite spacious, mostly filled with book shelves, file cabinets, and desks overflowing with paperwork. While Jude makes for the nearest phone, Mikleo phases back out of Milla to snoop around; if this building is a research facility and this room is an office, there must be stray documentation sitting around somewhere. That bookshelf looks like a great place to start…

 _Sixth elemental concentration and collimation. Polarization of light and darkness. Light amplification by stimulated emission of radiation. Spatial coherence. Plasma manipulation. Electromagnetic deflection._ Despite his initial enthusiasm at the multiple references to the element of light, it isn’t long before Mikleo is lost in paragraphs of scientific mumbo-jumbo. Discouraged, he skips the next few bookcases of similar-looking research content and settles upon an old file cabinet that screeches loudly as he slides its top drawer open.

“Mother of Maxwell, fuck,” Alvin curses. Leia just settles for a terrified whimper and knocks over a stack of paper as she dives underneath a desk for cover.

Jude glances up from his phone and snorts in laughter. “It’s just the Great Water Spirit poking around,” he stage-whispers to Leia. He then nails Edna in place with a Look™, who reluctantly abstains from throwing a handful of paperclips in Leia’s face.

Mikleo lifts a file out of the cabinet and keeps his eye on Alvin. The man’s eyes track the floating folder, even when Zaveid steps in the way and begins what can only be described as a mating dance. It’s somewhat of a shame that Alvin is unable to witness his strange twerking powers.

His eyes drop down to the binder in his hands. A data log of measurements, it seems.

_Subject E exhibits instability in maintaining first and sixth elemental duality. Recommend around-the-clock observation by disguising regulatory monitor within toy puppet._

_Subject E is dangerously hypotensive and anemic after artificial infusion with first elemental. Monitor fluid levels and administer appropriate normal saline, infuse two units packed red blood cells, maintain total parenteral nutrition. **Keep subject in medically-induced coma at all costs.**_

_Subject J satting at 82% on room air after fourth elemental misconfiguration; extensive water damage to extraction lab. Subject survival is paramount and must be prioritized above all other subjects._

_Despite increasing acclimatization with sixth element, Subject J still prioritizes affinity to fourth element._

_Subject Prime has left the facility without permission. A sixth elemental-specific biopsy has yet to be extracted from the subject’s cerebrum. Retrieval of Subject Prime has been specifically requested by the primary investigator._

All humans with mana-conductive brains vanished hundreds of years ago. It’s why Mikleo was so set on enlisting Jude’s help. But here he has record of humans with mana lobes who formed pacts with seraphim so they could manipulate elements.  _Storage chambers. Observation bay. Mana extraction._ Helioborg Research Station and its mention of the sixth element gives Mikleo the heebie-jeebies. Could… could Sorey have met his end here?

No. It’s not possible. Somewhere deep in his soul, Mikleo feels Sorey’s spiritual presence. Sorey’s still out there. He might have been here at some point, but the fact of the matter is that his Sorey is alive. Even if it takes Mikleo five hundred years, he _will_ find Sorey again. And then? …He’ll get there when he gets there.

He leafs through the pages, scanning for keywords. The sixth element is Light, so Mikleo keeps a lookout for that… but it isn’t long before he’s picking up on the first element, Shadow. Light and darkness are two sides of the same coin, after all.

“Two bodies,” Zaveid warns, “on a direct trajectory for our room.”

* * *

“Somebody’s coming,” Milla says for Leia and Alvin’s benefit.

“Oh!” Leia chirps. “Is this the part of the anime infiltration sequence where we go find a broom closet to hide in?”

“We don’t want to be too suspicious,” Jude reasons. Though he’s communicated most of the pertinent information to officials, they’ve asked that he remain on the line. “Just let them—”

With the gleeful grin of a madwoman, Leia swiftly unplugs the phone and heaves him into the nearest storage closet. He gets a bad feeling about this when she doesn’t join him. While there isn’t a lot of space in here, it’s not like Leia takes up a lot of volume. Besides, there’s no intimacy lost between them; for as long as he can remember they’ve been in constant physical contact in both sparring matches and sleepovers, so it’s not like—

The door swings open again. Jude has just enough time to catch a twinkle in Leia’s eye before she, with some help from an earth spirit only Jude can see, rams Alvin into the closet. The man pulls back to avoid colliding with Jude, only to encounter the closing door. With nowhere else to go, Alvin instead trips over a bucket and slams Jude into the wall amidst a shower of paper towels and cleaning supplies. Jude grapples the shelves for balance and ends up bringing additional boards of wood down upon the both of them.

Now Jude’s always been a small guy, and at his college age, he’s pretty much come to accept that he’s not going to get any bigger. He’s also come to accept that he’s the one who’s going to suffer when it comes to violent encounters, so it comes as a pleasant surprise when Alvin doesn’t completely flatten him against the floor.

He can’t hear anything outside. He can’t see much, for that matter; Alvin is crouched directly on top of him. Knees and arms cage his body on both sides, scarf pools atop his chest, warm breath wafts across Jude’s already flaming face.

Alvin smiles easily and doesn’t budge from his position. “Not suspicious at all, huh?” he rumbles.

A thrill races through Jude before the horrified embarrassment kicks in. “Can you please get off?”

The door slides open one last time. Stark fluorescent light spills over Alvin, illuminating a slight 5 o’clock shadow but casting the rest of his face into darkness. Jude thinks he spots a slice of scar tissue not covered by Alvin’s scarf, but Alvin is scrambling upright even with his left foot in a bucket and a spray bottle hanging from the trigger guard of his gunblade.

“You can sense spirits.”

The voice is not what Jude expected: young, clear, very high. He digs his way out of alcohol wipes and paper towel rolls to appreciate the tiny girl speaking to him—and _tiny_ she is: barely four and a half feet tall, with so little presence that the pink and purple doll floating next to her makes a much larger impact when it practically yells, “Don’cha worry! We’re not gonna report ya as intruders, ‘cause we’re the ones who totally let you in!”

“Teepo!” The girl snatches the puppet out of midair with both arms and squeezes it to her chest. “Shush! We’re still sneaking around.”

To all appearances, she looks like a very normal girl. Ash blonde hair, timid green eyes, and a particularly dark shadow that shimmers at her feet. At the same instant, he feels an almost crushing pressure behind his eyes. The sensation dissipates when he glances away and clears his mind, but returns full force the moment he refocuses his attention at the girl’s suspicious specter, now hovering around her waist.

He gets a full second of observation before the flying doll wriggles out of Elize’s arms and glomps his face. “What do you think you’re looking at, mister?”

“Ack!” He stumbles around, trips over cleaning supplies, bounces off Alvin’s chest, and goes down in a shower of debris just outside the closet. “What the—”

“She’s _fourteen_ , you creep.” Despite having no vocal chords or tongue (as far as Jude can tell, which is not much), Teepo’s condescending voice beams its way straight into his face. “I’ll be watching you _veeery_ closely, mister. Better not try anything funny!”

Making noises of distress and yanking at its remarkably stretchy material does nothing to remove the purple terror, and in fact only creates suction that feels somewhat like an elephant on a onion-only diet trying to suck out his soul through his eye sockets. It’s not till Alvin calmly sneaks a finger under the vacuum seal that Teepo pops off.

“What’s going on?” Milla and Leia shows up just a little late. No sight of Edna, Zaveid, Lailah, or Mikleo anywhere, but that pressure is back behind his eyeballs, as if his noggin is responding to a strong presence. Milla relaxes at the sight of Alvin restraining an overly aggressive toy, Jude panting on the ground, and a teenaged girl nervously bopping her fingers together.

The girl quickly bows the moment all attention is on her. “Um… hi. I’m Elize. I opened the doors to let you in.” She lifts her head slightly, catches Milla’s penetrating stare, and ducks right back into the bow. “Pleased to meet you.”

“You can see spirits as well?”

“Yes,” Elize says faintly. “Mostly light spirits from the Oscore Plant a few miles away.”

Milla’s eyes narrow and Jude wonders if she’s caught onto the enigmatic phantom too. Unfortunately, the trembling girl is caught in the crossfire, and when a shaky whimper escapes her lips, Jude is instantly on his feet to shield her from Milla’s inspection. The back of his coat tightens as Elize latches on and hides in his shadow. “Thanks to Elize,” he says, “I got to make my phone call. That’s all we needed, right?”

Elize’s grip on his jacket tightens when Milla’s attention shifts back to her. “I trust you are aware that her shadow has a shadow,” Milla says matter-of-factly.

Jude turns slowly so as to not startle Elize. As he turns, a sense of foreboding rises in his gut that almost makes him flinch—almost. The tiny fists bunching the jacket in the small of his back remind him that he’s sheltering a frightened girl from the Lord of Spirits, so he keeps turning until he can look into Elize’s shining eyes. He can see everything there—the insecurity and loneliness, the need to be loved—and it overwhelms the sensation of dread he picks up from the peculiar haze that casts a purplish tint to her shadow (which he can only really tell is there because there is a very clear demarcation between his shadow and hers). A shadow spirit? Who senses light spirits…

He carefully places an arm around her and hugs her to his hip. “Does that matter?” he says lightly.

The silence that stretches between them is shattered when Leia leans towards Alvin and dramatically stage-whispers, “Can we adopt her?”

“Please,” Elize whispers. “Take me with you.”

Jude shoots Leia a Look of Despair before kneeling down to Elize’s level. “Why don’t we talk to your parents first?”

“My parents are dead.”

That she is able to state this simply without a hint of emotion tells a lot about how she was raised. Then they have a lot in common.

“Your primary guardian?” he says, keeping his voice level.

“Mr Svent.” Elize shakes her head, a little of her previous fear leaking back into her expression. “But he’s never here. Please, you have to take me with you. I’ve… I’ve never been outside the research facility.”

He wouldn’t doubt it for a second if Milla told him Elize was deliberately playing with his heartstrings; she’s been appealing to his pathos this entire time, but then again, when has Jude ever let anything else but his sentimentality guide his decisions? He’s already decided that he’s going to take Elize out of Helioborg and show her the world, regardless of Milla’s disapproval or the consent of her irresponsible guardian or the mysterious phantom hiding in her—

“Let’s bring her along,” says Alvin abruptly.

“Aw! You’re actually pretty sweet under that cactus-rough exterior.”

Alvin shifts, revealing the butt of his gunblade. “Nah. If we don’t get moving soon, it’ll be really hard for us to get out. Hurry up and just give the girl what she wants.”

“Whatever. Just admit that you’ve fallen for her womanly wiles.”

“What? I… she’s—”

The doll in his grip abruptly reanimates. “What, you sayin’ she’s ugly? Huh? _Huh?_ ”

“Teepo, stop!” Elize pulls the puppet out of Alvin’s grasp and shoves its mouth into her chest. “Shut up.”

Its voice is muffled but still audible. “Everybody’s thinking it.”

“It’s just you. Stop being mean.” Elize pinches a corner of Jude’s jacket and tugs it towards the single window in the office. “If we go out this way, it’ll drop us off right next to the walls. This side of the building is less monitored than the front courtyard. The fence has a foundation that goes really far down, but that shouldn’t be any problem for an earth spirit.”

* * *

The wall is constructed entirely of brick and concrete. Edna punches a perfect person-shaped hole in the structure for laughs and without further ado, they’re free to fly into the great beyond.

But not really, not when they have _excruciatingly_ slow humans along for the ride. Really, was it only yesterday when all Milla had to do was armatize with him to send them riding the wind currents? Man, Zaveid misses those days.

Meh. Walking’s cool. Walking keeps Lailah’s shapely legs in shape. Walking is like, it’s like pausing to sniff the roses or something. It’s all poetic. It’s great for seraph appearance maintenance. Work those legs, woman. Umph. It’s totally a workout and it’s… it’s… Damn, this is hard. Walking sucks, and if Edna wasn’t specifically eyeing him with a challenge in those moe eyes, he’d have dispelled himself straight back into Milla’s mindscape for some nap time.

Why can’t physical strength have as large an energy pool as mana? Man, Milla had mana for daaays. When Zaveid armatizes with her, he actually had to squeeze his access point semi-shut just to limit the pure energy she’d otherwise pump him full of. Over the decades, they’ve developed some semblance of control, but damn. Milla’s the best direct-tether he’s had in centuries. To think that this is the product of being raised by Lailah.

It makes complete sense that the Lord of Spirits would entrust Lailah to protect the child meant to serve as Maxwell’s human vessel. Lailah just exudes that Cool Big Sis vibe, y’know? Milla turned out alright. Much better than if she’d been raised by _him,_ Zaveid’ll be the first to admit. Ahahaha. While he may be just as old as Lailah, even a few centuries older most likely, Lailah is levels of authority above him. She was Prime Lord to at least three Shepherds, after all.

Lailah, you done good, girl.

The human kiddo they picked up at their latest research station wasn’t lying when she said she’s never been out and about. They’ve not even got fifteen minutes of freedom and she’s already having trouble putting one foot in front of the other.

“Here, hop on my back.”

The mini moe glances nervously at Milla’s Squire. “I…”

Alvin snorts. “Don’t you even try, Jude. You’re a student, not a soldier. Let’s not even talk about how you’ve barely got fifty pounds on her.”

“Ya better not be callin’ her fat, buddy!”

The Squire’s eyebrows rise. “You’re a soldier?”

“Mercenary,” the man shrugs.

Leia barrels into his side and hugs his arm. “And you’re not even charging us! He legit has a heart, guys!”

“Don’t make me reconsider,” he grumbles.

Alvin is just stooping to the ground when Zaveid senses impeding danger on the winds: gunpowder, sweat, and a hint of something a bit beastly. “We’ve got incoming!”

Soldiers from Helioborg are upon them within seconds, guns blazing. Edna kicks up an earthen wall that blocks a hail of bullets. The Squire uses his own body to shield the kiddo, as if that’ll actually do anything.

“Is this supposed to be a retrieval party?” shouts Jude over the report of gunfire. Milla’s calm answer is lost on Zaveid, however, because though the kiddo and her floating doll cower behind Jude, her shadow does not. There is without a doubt a dark spirit tagging along with the human kid—and if the prickling behind his eyeballs is any indication, a powerful one at that. Maybe even a seraph, though dark seraphim haven’t been around since he and Sorey did battle with Symonne, and that was a thousand years ago.

The winds shift violently on the other side of Edna’s temporary barrier as something _huge_ barrels at them. “Squire!” Zaveid yells.

Jude understands instantly. “Slyph!”

They armatize just as the beastly tank punches through the earthen wall as if it’d been made of sand, its murderous red eyes glowing through the disintegrated aftermath. Zaveid leaves the dodging to Jude—that should be easy enough for a human with little combat experience—and immediately feeds him advice on possible offensive combinations of shearing whirlwinds and piercing blasts. It takes him a moment to realize that Jude isn’t taking any of his maneuvers into account. Jude’s first instinct was to grab Elize and wrap the both of them in a bubble of air… which is awfully noble of the human, yes, but he’s overestimated just how much cushion air provides. It’s like standing in front of a train with an air mattress for protection.

Sure feels like it too.

* * *

Mikleo’s body aches with the phantom pain of Zaveid taking the brunt of damage for the Squire. The wind seraph’s physical form dissipates almost as soon as it separates from Jude’s body. With the dearmitization goes the Squire’s ability to manipulate air, meaning he and the lab rat and her shadow doll are flying without a safe landing strategy. In a normal situation, Mikleo would totally sweep them up in a wash of water. Well, in a normal situation, Zaveid would be the one providing the cushion. But the boar-like monster from Helioborg has been genetically modified; its hide is a mixture of burnt browns and blackened reds and its twin tusks glow like heated coals under Lailah’s fiery assault. Milla and Alvin’s weapons are just as ineffective and the behemoth threatens to trample them both underfoot.

Mikleo chooses the middle ground and positions himself between the humans and the creature. Its mass is so great that it plows right through Edna’s tripping blocks and tossed boulders, so Mikleo weaves a ring of water about him until it reaches velocities that could cut through rock, then diverts it so that it smacks the boar in the nose—not head-on, but rather pushing its snout to the right. Its massive head turns to follow yet its momentum is so much that it spins out, left shoulder smashing into the ground before it rolls head-over-heels. Edna summons several slanted spears of stone that fail to pierce its hide, though she manages to get it stuck on its back and buy them a few seconds.

“Jude! _Jude!_ ”

The voice that cries out is that of the little girl, but Mikleo’s figurative hackles rise at the manifestation of a really powerful spirit. Against his better judgment, he turns his back on the flailing beast and takes stock of the scene: Elize crouched over Jude’s unmoving form, her eyes bright with tears. Her agitated doll makes sad whimpering sounds while darting about like a nervous dragonfly, but Mikleo’s eyes are attracted to the girl’s clearly agitated shadow which is most definitely not mirroring her movements.

 _He’s not dead,_ he’s going to yell. _Don’t freak, he’ll be okay_. But any words he can spare at the lab rat girl are interrupted at Leia’s scream and Maxwell’s pained shout. The soldiers have reappeared to flank them, to trap them against the snarling behemoth. Alvin’s return fire and Lailah’s waves of flame aren’t enough to keep them from losing ground and Edna, Edna is screaming his name, but he can’t move because the presence behind him freezes him in place with its sheer power, with its sheer _familiarity_. Darkness curls around his ankles like smoke. Images flicker in the haze before his eyes, tangible phantoms and twisted memories. Muse’s hand curls around his, wrapped around the staff she gave him centuries ago. A boy of light smiles at him, feathered earrings dangling under tousled white hair, before he turns to the east. Muse leans in and though he has never heard her voice in his life, she sounds exactly like what he’d imagined a mother would sound like. He can’t help but smile at the scent of burnt copper, of dust and decay, of heavy darkness that blots out even the night sky when Elize passes him. He watches dully as she trails her fingers through smoke and rings of violet runes. Her doll circles her madly, his frenzied taunts melding with the slow lull of her chanted words.

A midnight blue portal opens underneath the soldiers from Helioborg, and from it arises a faceless reaper wielding a glowing red scythe. A red black hole simultaneously appears beneath the behemoth from which a hundred greedy arms stream upward, finding any and every handhold on its mottled body. Human screams are silenced as the scythe flashes, flashes until the portal destabilizes seconds later and the phantom dissipates. The behemoth flails desperately and roars only once before it’s dragged into oblivion.

It’s over. It’s over, but as moonlight filters through the darkness and casts a violet hue upon Elize’s ash blonde hair, all Mikleo can think of is the boy of light and his mother’s whispers. Illusions are most convincing with a drop of truth.

He busies himself in checking Jude over while Maxwell approaches Elize.

“It’s about time you introduced yourself.”

The girl’s shadow is motionless and two-dimensional. The purple doll swells with indignation. “Hold it, buddy! We just saved your lives! We should be the ones making the demands.”

“Untrue.” There is an undercurrent of anger in Maxwell’s tone only Mikleo and his fellow seraphim can hear after a century of companionship. “I have traveled this land for centuries unnoticed, ignored even, because I avoid bloodshed and conflict such as this. Your actions will bring us unwanted attention whether you continue to travel with us or not.”

“What makes you think we want to stay with you?” Teepo barks. Elize immediately counters this with a worried glance at Jude and Mikleo and the floating toy amends, “Fine! I’m a seraph. Are you happy?”

Maxwell stares flatly at the doll. “You’re the shadow seraph.”

“Yup! Totally. Okay, fine, not completely. But you’re talking with me now, aren’t you? Can’t that be enough?” The tonal qualities of Teepo’s voice shift ever so slightly, losing that bright sheen of excitement to dip into a huskier shade. “I’ve been this girl’s shadow since birth. I don’t know if I can step out, really. What if I’m not dressed for the occasion? Am I even wearing clothes?”

The Lord of Spirits lets loose with her full spiritual pressure and the result is instantaneous. Mikleo’s eyes water in response to the almost painful force resonating within his skull and he has to squeeze them shut. He’s had a century to attune himself to her power; he can’t imagine what the shadow seraph is feeling, though Elize’s keening wail as she holds her head is enough.

Jude’s mind registers Milla Maxwell, Lord of Spirits, as well. But it is Elize’s cry that shocks him out of his resting recovery, and he rolls groggily out of Mikleo’s grasp and stumbles over to Elize without a second thought to his own health. Maxwell puts a cap on her presence just as Jude pulls the girl under his protection, and it’s then that Mikleo knows that they’re not going anywhere without the lab rat and her contracted shadow, trustworthy or not.

“You’ve made a very convincing argument,” Teepo says, “but I wasn’t kidding about the clothes thing. Here, how ‘bout I just direct you towards the nearest light seraph? In the name of balance and everything?”

“Oscore Plant.”

The words comes unbidden to Mikleo’s lips, and when they’ve been released he can’t help but hold his hand before his mouth. All eyes are on him and when it becomes clear that they won’t look away until he elaborates, he closes his eyes and pictures the boy of light who’d appeared before him, flickering in and out of sight amidst swirls of purple smoke.

“Sorey is at the Oscore Plant,” he says, his mother’s whispers on his tongue. “To the east, where every day the sun is borne anew.”

Cruel hope swells within his chest as he catches the faintest wisps of dawn on the eastern horizon. It’s like this every time; he’s been through the drill so often, shouldering crushing disappointment after a false lead. But things will be different this time with Jude and an unnamed but hauntingly familiar shadow spirit at his side. He can feel it. It’s like a light dusting of warmth over his skin.

Sorey’s waiting for him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Lesson learned: narrative exposition is hella boring. The last chapter had zero feedback, so I'll try to avoid that kind of storytelling in the future. I'm still working on the "show, don't tell" aspect of writing!
> 
> Random thoughts:  
> \- My headcanon is that Sorey and Mikleo are strictly demisexual (i.e. really gay but only for each other).  
> \- The artes that Elize used were "Dark Visitor" and "Negative Gate." Chilling powers they are when you sit down and think about them, never mind write them out...  
> \- I cite my creative license for the evil things I have in store for Teepo and Elize muahahaha  
> \- Zaveid is the token old man of every Tales team.  
> \- More old men soon to join: I have created roles for Rowen and Gaius. Too bad Sergei has been dead for centuries.


End file.
